


Before the Fall

by tanyart



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dragon Age, Demons, Gen, Mages and Templars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 19:52:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4317669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanyart/pseuds/tanyart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam goes through the Harrowing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Spur of the moment AU that spiraled, and here I am, _surprised_ about it. This takes place in some nebulous Dragon Age timeline where the Breach is happening, and also a Blight. 
> 
> Also Adam is a Circle mage elf.

Falling into the Fade had much been like falling into a dream, and Adam suspected coming out of it would be the same.  He didn’t know if he would remember anything once it was over, and of course the other mages had been forbidden to speak of it.  Maybe it was because they couldn’t precisely recall it either, only that they had to risk their lives—but that was a fairly easy thing to remember when everyone knew not all apprentices survived a Harrowing.  

Adam’s last thought had been how awful the Harrowing lyrium tasted, but even that was gone from his tongue in the Fade.  He couldn’t remember how many watchful Templars had surrounded him, who had stared as he fell in deep sleep, but it had been important that Gansey had not been one of them.  Gansey had left long ago to become a Seeker, and Gansey would not have to be the one to cut Adam down if anything went wrong.

But Adam was only standing now, though took an incredible amount of effort to realize it; he saw several different floors, above and below, to all sides of him.  So, with one direction as good as any, he took his first step in the Fade without much ceremony.

His surroundings shifted, taking shape as he walked.  Adam had read over and over the Fade was easily influenced by memories, and not all the memories necessarily his.  Occasionally he saw pieces that were entirely  _Adam_ —dark alleys, the smell of too many unwashed bodies, the dirty streets of the Alienage—and then there were things that were definitely of his world, like high walls trimmed with gold, a sparkling floor made from polished marble, portraits of nobles long dead.

And one that was not dead, but alive, somewhere in Therinfal Redoubt.

Adam stopped short at the painting of Richard Campbell Gansey the Third, son of a noble with a lineage purer than the king of Fereldan, if the rumors were true.  He did not know if this memory was his, though he was sure he had visited one of Gansey’s estates before, where he had been mistaken for a servant because of his pointed ears.  Gansey had been frigid to the offender, and Adam had been mortified.

Adam considered the painting and the stark memory with detached curiosity, of how the Fade had presented it to him with all the emotions and images running through his mind.  There was something mocking in the portrait of Gansey, who smiled benevolently down at Adam, perfect teeth, perfect shining armor, just _perfect_ in every conceivable way.  

Adam scoffed.  This was the Fade, and this was  _his_  Harrowing.  There would be a demon, hungry to take his body, and he had a feeling he knew which one.

With a care, he stepped closer the portrait, and swore he saw the unwavering gaze of the portrait shift to better focus on him.  His staff was a sudden comfort in his hand, heavy and familiar.

“Let me take a guess,” Adam said to painting. He considered his heart, emotions laid out like tiny objects he could simply take out or pack away.  The lovely estate, the beautiful paintings.  “Envy? Or would it be-”

“Pride?” said his own voice, from behind.

Adam turned, and felt his heart give a little start.

The image of him was not perfect.  It was him, a mirror-like copy, but the demon had taken all the trappings and embellishments of Gansey’s portrait and made it _his_.  It wore the robes Adam would buy, and held the powerful staff Adam would make, and smiled the easy smile of someone who was unconcerned with menial tasks such as eating or work.  It was the sort of smile Adam would wear, if only he had been born to rank and wealth.

He looked  _happy_ , and it hurt in a way that Adam had not known it could.

The offer was there.  The demon did not have to say anything Adam had not already thought himself;  _I could give you power, and I could give you this_.

For one horrific moment, Adam considered it. He was a young apprentice, but a talented one.  The proof was in the Harrowing and how the First Enchanter had singled him out so soon to go through with it.

Adam stared at the demon again, almost marveling.  It was nearly perfect, but the false image of him was too tall, too bulky, and had rounded ear tips, which jarred Adam constantly. Because, if he squinted a little, or maybe held his head at the right angle, the demon looked a lot like—

His father.

Pride laughed, deep and rumbling.  It said, sweetly, in Robert Parrish's terrible voice, “Or perhaps a fear demon would suit you better?”

A raised hand, a crack of wood, distant crying.  All memories, but Adam flinched just the same, heart in his throat. All the little emotions he took care to pack spilled out, clumsy and wild. His father was standing in front of him, he did not want to be hit. _He did not want to be hit._

Behind him, he could feel the portrait of Gansey’s eyes, watching, and, against his instincts or perhaps because of them, Adam glanced over his shoulder.

Gansey stood in place of the painting, looking a little ragged and tired in his new Seeker’s armor, the shining symbol of the eye was fixed on Adam.

“Adam?” Gansey said, confused.  The sword in his hand was slack, unready and caught off guard.

Adam was both relieved and upset at the same time. “ _You_ ,” he snapped, because this was  _his_  Harrowing, and Gansey was not even a mage. He should not have looked back.  “What are you doing here?”

But even as he questioned Gansey, he cast a spell towards the demon—his father, _himself_.  He wasn’t so sure why he had been so keen to put a name to the demon, wasting time like that, so surely it had been Pride all along.  

Adam had an affinity for lightning, for spells that sparked wildly but connected with deadly precision, and a part of him rankled that they would be no use.  He crafted ice and fire instead, and sent flames so hot and frost so cold they both burned the demon.

Gansey raised his sword, but Adam had casted a barrier and left Gansey yelling and shouting into spirit magic, “ _Let me help, let me fight_.”

“It’s fine, I’m fine.  I don’t need your help,” Adam said, no longer looking back at Gansey, but forward at the demon.  Gansey’s voice was muffled from the barrier, but Adam knew what he was saying.  

The demon fought back, laying its own burns on Adam, but the battle was quick. The demon had been more conniving than physically strong, and Adam had been stronger than it entirely.

He felt strange, unfinished at untethered ends.  The Fade was unraveling before him and he could see flecks of the real world, bits of the Circle Tower and the Templars still watching his still body.  His Harrowing was ending, dreamlike and fading.  Adam was at once sure he would not remember anything when he woke.

“You passed,” Gansey said beside him, which was odd. It sounded like triumph to the untrained ear, but Adam had known Gansey too long for that.  He sounded smug and gloating, completely unlike himself.  “ _They_  think you’re done.”

Adam looked back and went still.

Because Gansey looked exactly like himself, perfect in every way except for his green, green eyes—too green to be human.  

Adam shot forward, almost slipping as the ground beneath him wobbled and dissipated.  He could now taste the Harrowing lyrium on his tongue, the awful unavoidable bitterness of it. He was waking up, back in the world, but he pulled himself away with livid ferocity.

His hand and staff collided against his own barrier, and Gansey grinned, delighted by the irony.  It was the very same barrier he had put around Gansey to protect—no, to  _keep him out_.  And it made sense, didn’t it? That his stubbornness sense of independence would be his downfall.

This was Pride, genuine and unyielding.

 _Let me help, let me fight with you_.

 _No._ Adam spat out a word and the barrier collapsed.  He reached out, fingers brushing against Gansey’s neck, thumbs pushing against the hollow of his throat.  He felt rather than heard Gansey’s laugh vibrating down his arms, skin soft and warm under his tightening hands.

“Well done,” Gansey said, in a voice that cracked like the Fade around them.

Adam tasted lyrium again, then blood.  And then he woke up.

* * *

For a moment, he could not remember where he was, but Ronan’s hand was rough on his shoulder, and Adam opened his eyes, irritated by the looming grey body.

“Hey, Parrish. You awake?  Don’t you think you should leave the nightmares to me?” Ronan said, sitting back on his heels.  The hood of his robe had fallen over his eyes, shadowing his expression, and it gave him a rather menacing demeanor to his already menacing horned appearance.

“Well, it’s not like I _choose_  to have nightmares,” Adam said, still lying quite horizontally on the ground.  He gathered his wits with as much dignity as he could; his bedroll was in tangles, pack strewn to the side as if it had been kicked.  He would have probably woken up the entire camp if it had not already been morning.  

Somewhere, Blue was restocking her herb collection with Noah, and Gansey attending to the map and weather.  Ronan should have been packing the horses instead of bothering Adam, but that was typical of Ronan, fellow mage who seemed to be eerily tuned to Adam’s dreams.

“You were  _Fade_  dreaming,” Ronan clarified impatiently.  “Without wards.   _That_ was stupid.”

Adam did not have it in him to point out that Ronan dreamt in the Fade all the time without wards, though the difference between them was probably because Adam needed the wards to keep demons away, while Ronan tended to use wards to keep actual real world people  _out_.

“Did you know,” Ronan continued, apropos to nothing, “That there were two demons at your Harrowing?  I saw them when one of your memories bled over.  Annoying as shit, you know.”

Adam was not a Fade mage like Ronan, and he was annoyed that he couldn’t purposefully control what annoyed Ronan. It was a circular type of annoyance all around.  Ronan never had to go through a Harrowing, seeing as he was a comfortable apostate—and maleficar when the situation arose, which was often.  Adam suspected Ronan would have been the type to enjoy multiple Harrowings if that had been allowed. He had seen the way Ronan’s presence would attract a gathering of rage and wrath demons, each one of them too inferior to pose a real threat to Ronan.  Ronan would grin, more malicious and vicious than any demon, and tear open Fade rifts with no concern at all.

“I think there were a lot of demons at my Harrowing,” Adam said, trying to remember and failing.

“But only two that wanted  _you_.”

 _Did I kill both of them? Did I make it out safe?_ Adam wanted to ask, but that was ridiculous. The Templars would have killed him if he hadn’t. And besides, not even Ronan would have been able to answer. Fade memories were always shaped by the creator of the memory—all Ronan would see was the one Adam would have remembered, consciously or unconsciously.

The thud of Gansey’s boots interrupted them, their mage talk and the darker sides of magic.  He nudged Ronan in a friendly sort of way, showing no evidence that he heard their conversation.  Ronan obliged by standing up, meandering off as if to convey to Adam that the horses could do for some tending to after all.

“You all right?” Gansey asked, worried.

It was not every day Ronan bothered to be anyone’s wake-up call.  Adam shrugged, not feeling very committed to telling a lie or the truth at that moment. Whatever he had dreamt, it left him unsettled.

Gansey held out his hand, palm up.  Something about the gesture struck Adam as bizarrely threatening, just for a second.  He blinked away the sleep from his mind, feeling stupid and silly, and took Gansey’s hand.

“I’ll be fine,” Adam replied, and tightened his grip as Gansey pulled him up.


End file.
